John Zorn Presents Music for Artist Hilma af Klint

“There are many alchemical tropes in the pieces you’ll be hearing tonight.” So said composer John Zorn last Friday in New York, in the midst of a two-evening presentation of music written in tribute to the mystic artist Hilma af Klint. The setting for his sounds was the same as the home right now for many of af Klint’s paintings: the rotunda of the Guggenheim Museum, spiraled up in an ensorcelling shape similar to a temple envisioned by the Swedish artist as an optimal setting for her work. Not unlike the compositions that Zorn presented around Agnes Martin’s paintings at the Guggenheim in 2016, the program—performed on the museum’s ground floor before moving upward at the end—featured seven pieces for different arrangements of classical ensemble music and voice.